Your Friendly Neighborhood Music Critic

The Week in Music: 6/23/2017

The Week in Music Politics:

Spotify this week angered a lot of people by running an ad (pictured above) that declared Justin Bieber the “Now Latin King,” since his Spanish-language remix of “Despacito” with Daddy Yankee went to #1. The ad was later pulled, thankfully, but the internet took its punches while it could. Ironically, Bieber doesn’t know the lyrics to the song, and won’t perform it live again ever since he rapped “blah blah blah Burrito, Dorito” last time.

At a peace summit in St. Paul, Minnesota, Stevie Wonder said: “It is in your hands to stop all the killing and all the shooting wherever it might be, because you cannot say black lives matter and then kill yourselves… Because you know, we’ve mattered long before it was said.”

Chance the Rapper will now be including sign language interpreter’s on his tour, stating: “We will have interpreters at the show, which will be a new thing going forward, to help everybody experience the show… If you know anyone that’s deaf or hard-of-hearing please invite them to the show. We just want to turn up.”

The Week in Music Beefs:

Azalea Banks, the internet’s busiest music hater, has made claims that SZA is trying to steal her look. “Another day, another attempt to recreate the genius that is… Azalea Banks.” SZA commented and then deleted a post about not calling her or Banks a villain, but ultimately it’s just Azalea looking for another headline and another fight.

The Week in Music Business:

In more Spotify news, according to BBC, they’re “experimenting with allowing music labels to promote songs by adding them to users’ playlists as sponsored content.” This means that free users of Spotify might now hear songs on their playlists that they never intended to, just like the thirty second ads. “We are always testing new promotional tools that deliver the highest relevancy to our users,” said Spotify. The company is also thinking about going public and listing on the stock market.

The Week in Music Obituaries:

R.I.P. Prodigy, of the New York rap duo Mobb Deep. He was in the hospital for his battle with sickle cell anemia, but TMZreleased that the rapper might have died from choking on an egg. Regardless, the legendary rapper will be missed.

The Week in Music Oddities:

Jay-Z changed his name to JAY Z in all caps without the hyphen since the release of Magna Carta Holy Grail, but now it’s officially written as JAY-Z, with the hyphen back in. I don’t know why it matters, since it’s pronounced the same way every time, but apparently to Jay it really matters.

Hov’ did do some good this week however, by bailing out some dads for Father’s Day so that they could see their families. “Over 400,000 people, convicted of no crime, are held in jail because they cannot afford to buy their freedom,” said Jay. “When black and brown people are over-policed and arrested and accused of crimes at higher rates than others, and then forced to pay for their freedom before they ever see trial, big bail companies prosper. We can’t fix our broken criminal justice system until we take on the exploitative bail industry.” John Legend did some good on the matter as well, by sending incarcerated fathers letters from their children.